Archive for February, 2009

Have had the good fortune to stumble across Donna Leon, author of really intelligent detective fiction set in Venice. She reminds me a little of Simenon – remember the Maigret series? Psychologically astute, funny, atmospheric, character-driven – yum! I think I’m going to get into her.

I was down in London on Monday, flew Sunday night in the snow and then got diverted to Stansted!!!!!!! … but we didn’t land there and got diverted to Heathrow instead. Phew! Stansted is a fate worse than death and I might still be trying to get out of there now, had we landed there.

It took us from 11pm til 12:30 to get into central London with the tube on the Piccadilly line stopping, running out of power, then the men having to scrape the ice off the rails by hand!!! and finally we limped into Kings Cross, where it was 12:30 and not a taxi in sight, but 6 inches of snow on the ground. So I dragged my little suitcase to the hotel. 40 minutes it took me, and I was a retrospective snowplough all the way down the Euston Road 🙂

When I finally finished on Monday night I was running for the last and only flight to Edinburgh like a demented quasimodo. However, I had managed to slide into John Lewis and buy some Kureyon Sock Yarn and a pair of extremely bendy plastic needles to start a scarf, should I a) not be able to get to Gatwick or b) find my flight cancelled or delayed into next week. Neither happened, but I have here a lovely new WIP, a feather and fan scarf!